According to the Smart Insights ‘Managing Digital Marketing’ report, 46% of brands do not have an established digital marketing strategy, while 16% do have a strategy but have not yet incorporated it into their marketing activities. But here’s the thing: if you don’t have a plan in place, how can you expect to grow and innovate, measure meaningful results, and learn from past mistakes?

It’s time to stop panicking and start figuring out a strategy that can provide a powerful boost. We have identified the five most critical steps that you, the decision-maker, will take to ensure that your digital marketing activities have a real effect on your bottom line.

1. Know what you want (and set purpose)

Answer this question: What goal do you want your digital marketing efforts to achieve (for example, your company as an online provider for computer parts in Europe)? This is your goal.

Set and Measure Your KPI:

Be specific with your KPI by identifying the data that will hold you accountable for receiving.

Be realistic with your KPI by analyzing your previous digital marketing efforts – this will help you grow positively on your current results, while also helping you keep your expectations high.

Find a way to help you measure each of your KPIs – for example, are you using Google Analytics to track your conversions, engage or track your personal social media analytics and to measure content marketing success using tools like BuzzSumo?

2. Analyze your past (and learn from your mistakes)

You should (and should not) go into the planning period in the dark. Analyzing the past successes and failures of your digital marketing strategy can help you focus on determining the best KPI for your business. Analyze your company’s data through data-driven marketing with this you can be up to date with your company. Therefore, you may want to complete steps one and two at once.

Select the time period you want to analyze (it is advisable to set this time period as your new marketing strategy) – for example, decide whether you want to analyze the previous year, quarter, or month.

How to analyze:

Determine the time period you want to analyze and set your Google Analytics calendar to fit this time period.

Don’t forget to also analyze your competitors’ marketing strategy – create a spreadsheet to analyze your online activities (you can use SEMrush to determine a competitor’s SEO strategy, that is, what keywords are the biggest organic traffic to your website volume. This again confirms that it is useful to see that they are very aggressive in spending the payment.)

Ask yourself this question regularly: Do I need to do some more analytics that I hadn’t thought of before – e.g. Do I have time to test my content or the type of images I use?

3. Remember who you are (and speak their language)

Don’t let the plan get away from the people you’re trying to reach. You already know who your audience is (at least we hope you do), but sometimes the first things a digital marketer forgets between KPI settings, budget anger, and channel choices.

You’re not going to make this mistake – not this time. Instead you are going to put your audience at the heart of your digital marketing agency strategy, meeting their psychological needs and their deepest desires. How? Through the creation of well-flesh and well-thought-out people.

Develop a useful person:

Start with the source and note all demographic information about your target user, such as age, gender and location.

Then dig a little deeper and identify the issues that will help you solve your target personality.

Record their mental desires, goals, aspirations and fears and all the things that tickle them (think of their conscious and unconscious desires).

You can dive deeper into your Google Analytics account audience reports to identify key features of your target personality, such as age, gender, profession, etc.

When building your personality, it’s the right time to identify the people who will be most effective to them – they are influencers that target your marketing strategy.

4. Identify your meaning (and stick to your budget)

Three things are important to identify your tools: your budget, your digital channels, and your team (or people). It is important to take stock of all your resources before deciding what you still need for the next period.

For example, now is the right time to audit your current digital channels and decide if you are going to outsource specific areas of your digital marketing and whether or not you need a new hire or two and set a separate budget.

How to determine your meaning:

Your Budget:

Define your entire digital marketing budget.

See historical data of what you’ve done before (for example, has a particular channel brought you low-quality leads?)

Decide whether you use paid promotions (for example, paid ads on AdWords or social media).

Assess your most expensive digital channels. For each digital channel you want to use for paid promotions, allocate a certain portion of the budget (with the highest return and conversion per click and lowest cost).

If a particular aspect of your payment campaign strategy does not bring you the desired results, revisit it and invest in the allocated budget data channel, which will bring you the best results.

Your people:

Look at your current team and assess what you are capable of achieving (be realistic here and avoid stretching or overs-work).

Find out if you need to hire more people and if you can do so.

Decide whether all of your digital marketing activities take place at home, or whether you need to outsource some stuff to a third-party agency.

Get everyone on your team to review your digital marketing activity and consider some ideas for their future marketing strategy (the more autonomy your employee has in their role, the more likely they are to use your new plan).

Your channel:

Review your current digital marketing channels and decide which channels to put in and what you want to invest in (this depends on where your customers are and the time available to you).

Be clear on what each digital channel is trying to achieve.

Make sure at least one KPI is connected to each of your digital channels.

5. Plan (and don’t stick to it)

And make a plan and stick to it? But, but, what do you mean? Before panicking in the most organized segment of digital marketers, let me explain… your plan is not perfect from scratch. Not every option you do is correct.

And even if you create every plan carefully with a carefully crafted plan, you still can’t determine how your customers will behave based on analysis. Therefore, it is essential to measure and monitor the performance of your digital marketing strategy and change the elements.

Create Your Digital Marketing Calendar:

Try creating your timeline using Google Calendar – this way you can share it with your team members and allow them to edit it wherever needed.

Highlight the major campaigns you create and promote throughout the year, and set the timeframe for each.

Document the digital channels needed to ensure the success of each campaign.

If something doesn’t work (ie you can’t achieve the KPI you set), try separating the elements and identifying the ones that don’t work (like the time you post content or the tagline you’re using. For your ads?)

You will learn how to strategise, budget, select the best digital platforms and assess the success of your campaigns. Find all of this too overwhelming? Make your life easy by hiring the services of a data-driven marketing agency.